Lawyers have accused Apple of wiping music from iPods in a bid to prevent
customers from using rival music services, a court has heard

Apple has been accused of wiping iPods of music downloaded from competing music services between 2007 and 2009 without the knowledge of their customers, a court has heard.

When a user who had downloaded music from a non-iTunes music service attempted to sync their iPod to their iTunes library, an error message was displayed urging the user to restore the music player to its factory settings, lawyer Patrick Coughlin said in a Californian court.

Once restored, he maintained, the rival service music had been deleted without the owner's permission.

Apple security director Augustin Farrugia said the deletion of non-iTunes content was a legitimate security measure deployed to protect users from hackers and malicious files.

He said the error message was not more detailed as the company did not want to confuse users, or give them too much information.

The case against Apple, originally filed in January 2005, has been brought by consumers and electronic retailers who claim the company inflated the price of millions of iPods sold between 2006 and 2009 to around $350m (£222m). Should the court find Apple behaved anti-competitively, the company could be fined around three times this amount.

The court is set to hear a videotaped desposition from former chief executive and key witness Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011. He recorded his statement six months before his death.

An email Jobs sent in 2005 upon learning a rival company was planning on launching a program through which music could be purchased from anywhere and played on iPods was shown to the court, containing the line "We may need to change things here."